And he wasn’t going alone.
Jaxon looked around and realized he was in a bedroom. Not Libby’s. The scent that lingered on the tousled sheets was male and unwashed.
He quickly left the room, his footfalls soft and undetected by the young man who sat on a couch watching television while speaking to a friend on the phone. “Yeah, a freaking shooting, if you can believe it. That chick Maxine is dead and everyone else has been told to stay in their rooms. Guess the cops will be asking me questions later. I won’t be able to make poker night.”
The young kid’s voice droned on, and faded into the distance as Jaxon left through the front door, passing within inches of him.
Once he was out in the hall, he noted that there were only two more apartments. The first one to his left smelled stale and empty, so he continued down the hall. He paused at the last door on his right, his fingers touching the handle, caressing the large brass knob softly.
He brought his fingers up to his nose, and the smell of Libby fell over and through him. His knees felt weak, for just a second, and he angrily kicked those particular feelings to the curb. She deserved nothing from him, and she’d get even less.
She had bought a few extra days on this earth. Until he knew what the hell was going on, the status quo would remain in effect.
His fingers reached for the handle, and he was surprised to find it turn sweetly as the door opened to him.
Yeah, he might as well make good use of those few extra days that he would allow her to breathe and live.
A few extra days Diego had never been given.
A few extra days to make her pay.
Chapter 3
The door opened silently, swinging inward, and stopped just shy of hitting the wall.
Inside this space that she called home, Libby was everywhere, and nowhere. Her scent lingered in the air, tantalizing his nose, spreading dark emotions through his system as he slowly made his way into the tiny apartment. There was nothing here that appeared to belong to her.
She was a woman with less than nothing, and as he looked around the bleak living area, a picture of her was beginning to emerge that was far from the hellcat he remembered.
One more piece of the puzzle to figure out.
He moved deeper into the main room. It was narrow and the walls were gray, bare of pictures, with not one living plant to be seen. Ferns. She used to love ferns and huge blue hydrangeas.
A small tingle of something slithered through him as his eyes continued to take in the depressing little room. The place she called home.
Alarm bells were beginning to clamor in his head, and a feeling of unease continued to gnaw at his belly. A hardcover book caught his eye. It had been thrown carelessly onto the threadbare sofa, which was literally the only piece of furniture in the room. His fingers trailed over the worn volume before he picked it up.
Unlocking the Mysteries of the Mind.
The woman from his past loved reading gossip magazines and articles on home décor. Anything light to offset the grim reality of her job. Looking around once more, he shook his head as his body tensed. He wasn’t the only one who had changed in the last three years.
He moved toward a hall that led to the back of the apartment. He could smell her there. Her soft feminine scent was the one thing that hadn’t changed, and it became the singular constant in an otherwise bizarre evening.
Jaxon slipped into the room, silent and deadly, like the predator he was. His eyes automatically found her on the bed, where she lay, deathly pale, in a state of agitated sleep. She was faceup, her right arm curled to the side of her neck, the long graceful fingers entwined deep into the heavy blond waves that haloed her head. The other hand cradled her left side.
She looked like a fucking angel.
He quickly crossed to her side and leaned in close, sniffing her face and wrinkling his nose as a medicinal scent wafted toward him.
Fuck. She’d been drugged. What the hell had she taken?
As he continued to study her, he wanted to feel nothing. He wanted to be able to look at Libby as if she were nothing more than another target. But even he, cold bastard that he was, could not deny how shocked he was at finding her here, amidst this filth and in such a wasted condition.
Jaxon rubbed his temples, feeling a nasty headache begin to pull at his brain.
What comes around goes around.
Yeah, Libby had found some bad karma for sure, and as an image of Diego’s battered and bloody corpse lashed through his mind, he clenched his lips tightly together.